In order to play a musical instrument, one has first to learn and master the fingering system for such a musical instrument, where different kinds of musical instruments employ different fingering systems. There have been proposed various technologies to assist learners in mastering the fingering methods efficiently. For example, unexamined Japanese patent publication No. H01-314282 discloses a fingering guide displaying apparatus which aids a learner to master the fingering methods for the trill or tremolo playing in playing wood wind musical instruments. The apparatus according to this publication is to alternately display two fingering patterns respectively corresponding to two note pitches to be played in the trill or tremolo playing. Unexamined Japanese patent publication No. 2000-112470 discloses a fingering guide displaying apparatus which gives guidance of detailed fingering methods according to the progression of the music. The apparatus according to this publication is to display a series of images showing the transition of the fingering from the release from one key till the depression on another key successively along with the progression of the music. Unexamined Japanese patent publication No. 2000-3171 discloses a fingering data creating apparatus which stores in a small data amount the movements of fingers to be referred to in learning the fingering methods. The apparatus according to this publication provides a recording mode and a playback mode which are selectable by the user, in which the recording mode is to take pictures of the fingering movements of the instrument player using a so-called motion capture technique and to capture the movements of only the joints of the respective fingers as serial fingering data, whereas the playback mode is to display images from the serial data created in the form of polygons based on the respective fingering data along with the progression of the music.
In guiding the fingering methods for wind musical instruments, however, careful considerations should be given in handling the note pitches, as most of wind musical instruments such as trumpets, clarinets and horns are so-called transposing instruments and accordingly there are pitch differences between the notes in the musical scores notated for such wind musical instruments and the actual notes which are usually notated in the key (tonality) of C. For example, there are two kinds of clarinets which are transposing instruments, one in the Bb tonality on which the notes sound a major second (two semitones) lower than the notes notated on the music score for the instrument, and the other in the A tonality on which the notes sound a minor third (three semitones) lower than the notes notated on the music score for the instrument. Accordingly, if a player plays a music piece reading a music score written in the key of C, the actual note pitches produced will be a major 2nd below the notes notated on the score in the case of the Bb clarinet, while the actual note pitches produced will be a minor 3rd below the notes notated on the score in the case of the A clarinet. It should be understood herein that the musical flat sign will be represented by an alphabet character “b” where necessary for the convenience of typewriting. With the conventional fingering guide apparatuses heretofore proposed, however, the music playing data have been prepared with the note data defining notes in one tonality (in most of cases, in the key of C) only, and the apparatus can only indicate the fingering patterns for the defined note pitches to the learner, which has been a kind of inconvenient in learning the fingering methods of the transposing musical instrument.
In many wind musical instruments, there are several fingering patterns or methods available to produce the same note pitch with respect to some of the available notes on the instrument. Among several fingering patterns to produce a same note pitch, some fingering patterns are very difficult to handle and are for particular use by advanced learners, while some are not so difficult to handle and can be used by beginners. However, heretofore proposed fingering guide display device would simply enumerate plural fingering patterns for a single note pitch, even if there are plural fingering patterns available to play the same note pitch, and could not indicate preferable ones selected according to the skill level of the learner.